As Mark Zuckerberg’sprivacy paradecarries on , a researcher has revealed his findings of a since - patch Facebook exposure in Messenger that could potentially unwrap data about who users had been communicating with .
Cybersecurity software package company Imperva — which antecedently identifiedanother bugthat allowed site to see Facebook users ’ “ like , ” localisation history , and interests — partake in its written report on the vulnerability in ablog postby researcher Ron Masas on Thursday . Using a user ’ web browser , a hacker could potentially exploit iframe belongings to see who that drug user had been chatting with on Messenger .
Masas say a hacker could do this by essentially baiting a Messenger user to press a speculative link to a malicious internet site . Once they clicked anywhere on the page , a new windowpane would open — potentially out of vista of the user — and allow the hacker to dig into whether the user had been or had not been in conversation with other Facebook user on Messenger . After Masas flagged the issue to Facebook the first time , he was capable to get around the company ’s initial fix :
Having reported the exposure to Facebook under their responsible disclosure plan , Facebook palliate the emergence by every which way creating iframe elements , which initially broke my cogent evidence of concept . However , after some piece of work , I make do to adjust my algorithm and discover between the two states . I shared my finding with Facebook , who resolve to completely remove all iframes from the Messenger user port .
The company observe that the issue is not specific to its platform but confirmed that it has indeed update its codification and removed iframes from its Messenger WWW app .
“ The issue in his study stems from the mode web web web browser handle content embedded in webpages and is not specific to Facebook , ” a Facebook spokesperson said in a instruction to Gizmodo . “ We ’ve made recommendations to internet browser makers and relevant web standards groups to boost them to take measure to forbid this eccentric of event from pass in other vane practical software , and we ’ve update the web rendering of Messenger to ensure this internet browser behavior is n’t trigger off on our service . ”
It ’s of course an interesting calendar week for such news to arrive , as it collide with Zuckerberg’s“privacy”-focused visionfor the unholy union of WhatsApp , Facebook , and Instagram . Zuckerberg wrote in an inordinately longFacebook postthis week that he consider “ a privacy - focused communication platform will become even more important than today ’s unfastened chopine . Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally , which is why we build social networks . ” And yet .
It ’s deserving noting that while still a privacy issue , the vulnerability does n’t seem to discharge any other details associate to chats themselves other than whether a user was in communication with another user or bot . But as Masas noted , “ browser app - based side - channel blast are still an overlooked topic , while big players like Facebook and Google are becharm up , most of the industry is still unaware . ”
[ The brink ]
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